The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (11 page)

When the gamekeeper had relaxed a little, Adam said, “Let’s see if we can go on now. You heard chanting. It was only natural for you to be afraid. Did you run away?”

McArdle’s face stiffened in remembered indignation. “That I did not!—not then, at any rate. Whoever they were, carryin’ on like that, they were on His Lordship’s property without leave. By then, I was pretty sure they weren’t poachers—they’d hae scared away all the game for miles!—but it was my duty to see what they were about.”

“So you went to take a closer look?”

“Aye. I made my way to the top o’ the hill, quiet as I could. There was firelight show in ‘ through the trees, down in a hollow about a hundred yards below me. I didnae want anyone to spot me—that chanting had scared me plenty—so I kept under cover and edged close enough to take a look through the scope on my rifle. I dinnae ken what I expected to see, but it certainly wasnae the likes o’ what was going on.”

Again he stopped short, and Adam glanced briefly at McLeod and Peregrine. The inspector looked grim, the blue eyes dark behind his aviator lenses, and Peregrine’s face, above the bulky knit of his Arran sweater, was several shades paler.

“What did you see?” Adam urged.

McArdle shivered slightly. “There must’ve been about a dozen of ‘em,” he muttered, “all muffled up in long white robes with hoods, almost like they was monks or something. One was standin’ in the middle with his arms in the air, an’ the rest was marchin’ round in a circle-widdershins, ye ken?”

“I know the term. Go on.”

“Well, then they stopped all of a sudden, an’ I noticed there was this other mannie, inside the circle by this big, flat rock. He wasnae standing, though; that’s why I didnae see him at first. He was crouched down like he was sick or something—-only, then I saw his hands was tied behind him. That’s when I
really
knew it was somethin’ queer goin’ on!”

“What happened then?” Adam said. His voice was almost a whisper.

“The one standin’ in the middle went over to the one with his hands tied, an’ he kneeled down too. He had somethin’ in his hands-maybe a bowl or somethin’, I couldnae see—an’ he held it out to t’other man. But then one o’ t’other men in the circle gave a sort o’ howl and rushed forward. I think he coshed the one mannie in the heid. An’ then metal flashed—a wee knife o’ some kind, I think—an’ there was blood spurtin’ everywhere!”

McArdle paused to swallow. The sound was startling in the taut silence.

“The man wi’ the tied hands kicked an’ struggled, but they wouldnae even let him fall over,” McArdle whispered. “His—blood just kept pourin’ all over the thing that t’other man had in his hands—frae his neck, I think. When they finally let him fall,
I—know
he was dead.”

Adam had not taken his eyes from his subject for some time now.

“What did you do then?” he said in a neutral voice.

The gamekeeper’s face worked, and he gave his head a shake.

“I-I didnae tell the sergeant before, but it was nae branch breakin’ that made me light out o’ there. I was outraged at what they’d done, and I wouldhae shot at ‘em, if I could. But my rifle jammed when I tried to chamber a round—made a noise like a bloody cannon going off! I didnae stop to see if those geezers in the hoods heard it. I just took to my heels. I didnae stop till I got back to my jeep!”

He was breathing hard by the time he came to the end of his narrative, and Adam leaned across to lay a hand lightly on his shoulder.

“Steady, Jimmy,” he murmured soothingly. “You’re in no danger now. Just sit back and catch your breath. Close your eyes, if you want. You deserve a rest. You have nothing more to worry about just now.”

The gamekeeper subsided, even when Adam took his hand away, but his expression still was troubled.

“They killed that man right before my eyes,” he mumbled. “I should hae done something sooner—”

“There was nothing you could have done,” Adam said firmly. “I want you to remember that, and believe it. By the time you realized what was happening, the deed was done. You did well to get away and inform the police.”

“But they didnae believe me—”

“They believed you enough to send for Inspector McLeod and me,” Adam replied firmly. “As I told you before, it was a case of not
wanting
to believe that such a thing could happen here in Blairgowrie. It was nothing to do with you, personally. And no one blames you for what happened.”

Seeing that his assertion had the desired calming effect, Adam shifted back to his earlier line of questioning.

“Now. Can you remember where you saw this killing take place?” he asked.

McArdle nodded.

“Do you think you could lead us there?”

“Aye.” The man’s voice carried the strong ring of confidence.

“Good,” said Adam. “Then that’s just what we’ll do, as soon as it comes light. You’ll lead us to the hill you spoke of, and we’ll see what we can find. Until then,” he continued, “I’d like you to close your eyes and try to get some rest.” He reinforced the suggestion with one firm hand on McArdle’s shoulder, the other one passing lightly over eyes already closing in relieved response.

“Lie back and go to sleep,” he said, easing him back, with McLeod’s help, to lie placidly on the bunk. “Relax and sleep deep, with no disturbing dreams, and awake when I call you by name, feeling rested and refreshed.”

A moment longer his hand remained over the reclining man’s eyes, making sure his subject was truly and deeply asleep. Then he straightened and glanced up at McLeod, motioning for him to step outside the cell with Peregrine.

“Well, I’m afraid I’m convinced,” he said quietly.

McLeod nodded grimly. “So am I.”

“But, how can you be sure he didn’t make it up?” Peregrine asked, hushed.

Adam raised a patient eyebrow. “For one thing, the man’s no occultist. He wouldn’t have had the knowledge necessary to invent a story like that, even assuming he had the inclination to do so. As it is, you saw how agitated he became, when he was describing the murder itself. It was almost enough to snap him out of trance.

“And I have no doubt that he was in a trance, and that he was telling the truth—at least as he perceived it. He even told us about wanting to shoot the perpetrators, and being stopped because the rifle jammed—which it sounds like he didn’t even tell Kirkpatrick.”

“But, a human sacrifice, Adam—” Peregrine’s face was pale. “If that really is what he saw, what does it mean?”

“It means, laddie, that someone or other has set some very dangerous plans in motion,” McLeod said darkly. “And we’d better do our level best to find out who they are and what their objectives may be, before any of us gets much older.”

He stole another glance at the snoring McArdle and shook his head. “I suppose I’d better pass the word to Kirkpatrick. Wherever this investigation may lead before we’re through, it begins here in Kirkpatrick’s jurisdiction, and he’d better be the one to organize the official expedition of inquiry.”

Chapter Eight

SOME OF SCOTLAND’S
prime ski areas lie north of Blairgowrie—the Spittal of Glenshee, then Devil’s Elbow, halfway to Braemar, famous for its summer Highland games—but the two vehicles that left from Blairgowrie Police Station shortly after 7 A.M. would not be going that far. Kirkpatrick led the way in the white police Land Rover, with Jimmy McArdle directing from the passenger seat and two additional police officers sitting in the back, hand-picked by Kirkpatrick from the ranks of the men on the morning shift. Adam’s blue Range Rover followed close behind, his two passengers silent in the pre-dawn darkness, each alone with his own thoughts.

This early, the snowy landscape north of Blairgowrie was patched with heavy pockets of ground fog. With luck, they would be heading off-road just about at first light. It was heavy going now, though, and Adam had to concentrate all his attention on the road ahead. For the first fifteen miles of the drive to Baltierny, there were moments when he completely lost sight of Kirkpatrick’s Land Rover, forging out in front of them like a hound leading the hunt.

The simile had an ominous ring, to Adam’s way of thinking. They had not yet identified their quarry, but after hearing the gamekeeper’s story firsthand, he did not doubt that they were on the trail of something dark and deadly. He did not want to let himself jump to the premature assumption that the Lodge of the Lynx was behind it, but the possibility was not illogical, given recent evidence of a Lynx resurgence. Or perhaps he was becoming paranoid.

“I hope this bloody fog lifts before We get where we’re going,” McLeod grumbled, craning forward to keep track of the twin red taillights bobbing along ahead of them. “If it doesn’t, I’ll be surprised if McArdle can even find the Baltierny turn-off—let alone a body in the woods.”

But by the time they reached the junction with a “B” road and turned right, the mists had begun to lift, showing fugitive glimpses of dear sky overhead. The road offered a dismal ribbon of soft grey slush—happily, free of ice—but the evergreens flanking it carried heavy festoons of white, and snow still covered the ground on the open spaces and drifted deep in the hollows.

The “B” road was a single lane, with turn-outs every quarter mile, but they carried on without meeting anyone for another seven or eight miles until they came to an unpaved track branching off into the woods on their left. A hundred yards or so beyond, both vehicles pulled up before a chain-link gate set between the end-posts of a barbed wire fence, with a mud-clogged cattle-grid set into the ‘ground before it.

The gate was secured by a padlocked length of heavy chain. Hunched deep in the warmth of his parka and blowing on his fingers to keep them warm, McArdle scrambled out of the police Land Rover to open the padlock with a key from the ring on his belt. He hauled the gate aside to let the two vehicles through, then made a move to secure it again, but McLeod stuck his head out the window as they passed through.

“Better just leave it, Mr. McArdle. If we have to call for additional personnel, I want the way left open so they can get in.”

McArdle scowled slightly, but did as he was told. Once he was back in the Land Rover, the two parties set off again. The forest track was narrow and winding, little more than an ongoing pair of muddy ruts cutting through the trees, though the base was solid. They went past several opportunities to turn off, proceeding for nearly two miles before the police vehicle slowed and then pulled to the right into a muddy turn-out just about long enough for two cars. High ground rose to either side, and as Adam pulled in close behind the police Rover, he caught sight of a footpath snaking off up the slope to their right, little more than a game trail.

The two vehicles disgorged their occupants, who spent the next five minutes pulling on snow boots and donning heavy coats and hats and gloves. As they gathered at the foot of the path, Peregrine noticed that one of the constables had a camera slung over one shoulder, and all three of the Blairgowrie officers were packing pistols.

McLeod had armed himself as well. Peregrine had watched him pull the familiar Browning Hi-Power out of the zipper bag behind the seat, slap a magazine into the butt, and tuck the weapon into the waistband of his trousers before zipping up his black anorak. Adam, he guessed, carried more esoteric protection inside his sheepskin coat. Peregrine himself was armed with his sketchbox.

“You’re quite sure this is the place, Jimmy?” Kirkpatrick said.

The gamekeeper bristled slightly. “Just you remember that I’ve been patrolling these woods for more years than you’ve been alive, Callum Kirkpatrick!” he said. “It’s the right place, just you wait an’ see. The dell I told you about is round the back o’ this rise. Just follow me, and watch yer step.”

The lower levels of the path were wet and slushy. All around them, the woods were sibilant with the moist drip and trickle of melting snow. The sound rasped at Peregrine’s nerves as he ‘ struggled after Adam and McLeod up the miry trail, with his sketchbox banging against his side. A cold knot of dread began tightening somewhere in the center of his chest, but he forced himself to press on in tight-lipped silence.

Had he known it, his feelings of foreboding were shared in full measure by Adam. That inner tension continued to grow with every step. This was by no means the first time that he and McLeod had been obliged to confront the aftermath of a death by violence, but rarely had he experienced so sharp a premonition that this crime was to prove personally significant.

As the party advanced over the crest of the hill, the sun broke through the wintry haze of lifting fog. Below them, on the north face of the hill, stood a rough circle of oak trees, their leafless branches creaking stiffly in the lightly moving air, and in the center—

McLeod stopped short in his tracks with a muttered imprecation. Kirkpatrick swore softly under his breath. Adam went very still. In the middle of the circle of trees, sprawled face-down on a bier of melting snow, lay the limp, greyish figure Of a man. Even at this distance, a dark stain of red could be seen surrounding the upper half of the body.

“All right, Sergeant,” McLeod said quietly, when he had drawn a deep breath. “This is your jurisdiction, so you call the shots, but I do believe we’re going to need a Serious Crime Team.”

“Aye. That, and an ambulance,” Kirkpatrick agreed soberly. “Mr. Heriot!”

“Sir?” The constable with the camera moved a step closer.

“Leave the camera with me, then get back to the car and radio back to base,” said Kirkpatrick. “Tell ‘em what we’ve found, tell ‘em what we need, and get somebody to ring Perth for a police pathologist and the other necessary personnel.”

“Aye, sir.”

Heriot handed over the camera, then withdrew smartly. McLeod watched him go with some misgivings.

Pity there isn’t any way to scramble the call,” he remarked, “but I suppose the nearest telephone is—what, an hour or so away?”

At Kirkpatrick’s confirming nod, McLeod sighed.

“Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose. Still, we’ll be lucky if we don’t have half the press in Scotland down on us by noon. Before that happens, however, I suggest we go in carefully and take a closer look, get some preliminary photos, just in case there are any clues that will be lost as the snow melts.”

“Right, Inspector. Mr. Jamison?” Kirkpatrick glanced at the other waiting constable. ‘’I’ll ask you to work your way around the clearing to the left. Watch for footprints, and keep clear if you find any. Also, McArdle said there’s a logging road on the other side of the hill—which may be how the perpetrators got in and out, since they didn’t come through that locked gate. See what you can find
there,
especially tire tracks.”

The young constable nodded and headed off in the direction his superior had indicated, and Kirkpatrick turned back to his Edinburgh counterpart.

“Anything else you can think of, Inspector?” he asked.

McLeod shook his head. “Let’s have a closer look.”

At Kirkpatrick’s gesture of invitation, McLeod carefully moved out across the untrampled ground toward the edge of the trees. Kirkpatrick followed, taking pains to tread in McLeod’s footprints, and Adam followed directly behind him. Peregrine shadowed Adam, himself shadowed by McArdle, reluctant to go any closer yet drawn by something he could not name. Even from the edge of the clearing, the scene was as disturbing as Adam had warned him it might be.

The dead man was lying face-down, his white-clad body resting partway on a smooth, flat rock that was iced over with spilt blood. He appeared to be naked under the thin, blood-stained white robe he wore. His feet and legs showed bare below the robe’s mud-bedraggled hem, and his hands had been bound tightly behind his back with a fine crimson cord. His head was very bloody, the grey hair matted stiff over an ominous depression in the back of the skull.

“I
told ‘
em, so I did,” McArdle muttered hoarsely to Peregrine. “They thought I was making it up—as if anybody would make up something like this!”

Peregrine wasn’t listening. They had reached the ring of ancient oaks now, Sergeant Kirkpatrick snapping an occasional photograph, and as Peregrine gazed down at the fading circle in the snow, traced out with dirty-grey remnants of ash, a black sense of violence struck out at him with the sudden, unforeseen force of a physical blow.

All at once he found himself breathing in the charnel stench of spilt blood, mixed with the sickly sweet reek of incense that somehow was not quite—right. In the same instant, he caught a residual backlash of terror, resonating outward from the dead presence of the victim.

Suddenly the clearing was full of ghosts—a gathering of semi-transparent images superimposed over the solid forms of McLeod and Kirkpatrick. Transfixed with horror, Peregrine counted a baker’s dozen of robed figures treading their death march in the snow around the fallen figure in their midst. And as he looked on, knowledge of the dead man’s identity struck him like a fist in the pit of his stomach.

The revelation was so abrupt and so painful that he gasped aloud and staggered backwards, clutching blindly at the nearest branch to keep from falling. Alerted by the gasp, Adam glanced back to see the young artist staggering against the trunk of one of the palisade oaks, his face nearly as white as the snow, his hazel eyes dilated behind his glasses.

Adam made a brisk lunge to his side and caught him before he could fall.

“Steady on, I’ve got you,” he said in a low voice, gripping the younger man’s shoulders with strong hands and searching his eyes. “I can see that it isn’t just the blood. Take a deep breath and relax, and tell me what you’re seeing. Mr. McArdle, can you give him a little privacy, please?”

As McArdle moved off, murmuring uneasily under his breath, Peregrine gulped air and shut his eyes tight, trying to obey. For a moment he neither moved nor spoke, Then he managed a deep breath and exhaled with a shudder, making a visible effort to pull himself together.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” he muttered in a constricted undervoice. “I’ve just realized who it is, lying dead there in the clearing. It’s your friend—the old fellow from the bookshop.”

“Randall?”
Adam mouthed the name more than he said it, his senses reeling at the disclosure. He shot a swift, involuntary glance over his shoulder, at the unwitting McLeod still approaching the frozen body, then felt the young artist sway slightly against the strength of his support.

“Easy!” he murmured, returning his attention to Peregrine. “You aren’t going to faint on me, are you?”

Peregrine gave a negative shake of the head and drew himself up. “Don’t worry about me,” he said thickly. “I’ll be all right in a few seconds.”He gave Adam a queasy look and added, “I could be wrong, Adam. I hope so.”

Adam made himself draw a careful breath and let it out. Unfortunately, he had no doubt that Peregrine was telling the truth.

“I know you do,” he said softly, “but you can’t help what you see. Whatever has happened, the blames belongs to those who committed the crime. Now wait here. I’d better warn Noel.”

Peregrine’s face was still blanched with shock, but he managed a careful nod. Steeling himself, Adam released him and moved off to overtake McLeod and Kirkpatrick down in the hollow. The two policemen were crouching on either side of the body, McLeod on the left and Kirkpatrick on the right, heads bent intently as they made note of the obvious wounds and the sergeant took more photos. From McLeod’s air of professional detachment, Adam could tell that he had not yet recognized the dead man.

As Adam drew nearer, he could see for himself the bloody abrasions on the back of the head, indicating that the dead man had been struck more than once from behind. The sheer volume of blood, however, was owing to a deep gash in the jugular area below the right ear.

Wordlessly Adam knelt across from McLeod, checking the body for vital signs, as a matter of formal medical convention. He shifted his weight, then carefully lifted and turned the head just enough to get a clear view of the dead man’s profile.

A single fleeting glance was enough to confirm the truth of Peregrine’s visionary revelation. Adam closed his eyes for a brief instant, forcing a host of hard questions to the back of his mind as he braced himself to deliver the necessary pronouncement.